The U.S. is not, and has never been (not even in its darkest days during the height of the Cold War), the "largest exporter of terrorism on the planet". Nor has the U.S. provided undemocratic regimes with instruments of torture. Nor do we make people "disappear", like authoritarian left-wing states do.

no, it just supported Subharta taking over East Timor and the follwing blood shed. Supported Saddam Hussein and delivered him all the weapons he asked for. The USA also supported following mass murdering assholes and terrorists:
Contras
Pinochet
Argentinian Junta
Greece Junta

Also don't forget the close ties with Pakistan (who incidentally killed countless Bengalis). Or the support if South Africa's war in Angola. But hey, suppressing people was never wrong in the books of the USA as long as there was profit to be made for the corporations of the american ruling class. Also don't forget those terrorists in Afghanistan - that were supported by the USA once and called freedom fighters and other nice names. Until they took over the country and talks of an oil pipeline broke down. Oh and Operation Gladio. The actions of the South Vietnamese Regime were all ok too btw,

So you agree with me. Nothing you have said here disputes what I said above.

If you think it does, please point out specifically what I said that you think is refuted, and specifically what you said that refutes it.

energyman76b wrote:

the question that remains:
was it plain ignorance or willful lying in your part?

non sequitur; I refer you to what I just said.

I'm tired of this self-righteous, hypocritical hyperbole and ranting by Europeans. "Blah, blah blah! Rant rant rant! Americans -- worst people to ever walk the face of the Earth!". Get it fucking straight: until somebody takes genocide into the billions range, nobody will ever compare to the brutality, savagery, and inhumanity Europe has inflicted on the rest of the globe, from which it is still recovering -- not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the Persians, and certainly not the United States. Pointing the finger at America's brief Cold War activities, which were paralleled all around the globe by the way, or its recent actions in the Middle East does not erase two millennia of incomparable crimes against humanity, which cannot on its historical time-line even be judged to have ended because of a few decades of relative passivity while recovering from your last bout of globally catastrophic mayhem and huddled comfortably under the umbrella of U.S. protection. Get the fuck off your high horse, Europeans, because you're not fooling anybody but your own hypocritical selves, and it's disingenuous and asinine._________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

The U.S. is not, and has never been (not even in its darkest days during the height of the Cold War), the "largest exporter of terrorism on the planet". Nor has the U.S. provided undemocratic regimes with instruments of torture. Nor do we make people "disappear", like authoritarian left-wing states do.

You have no fscking clue what you are on about: like most Americans you live in a state of ignorance about the history of what your nation has done, and continues to do in your name. For example, Eisenhower testified before Congress in the 1950s about US involvement in Latin America, which had always been purported to be in the interest of "human rights"*. He stated quite clearly that the overriding mission objective he was given was to ensure a favourable economic investment climate for US corporations. energyman listed just a few of the regimes propped up by US military support, and to whom instruments of torture were shipped out as "humanitarian aid." The US even runs a torture training centre, where many of these people graduated from, and which Rumsfeld and Cheney expanded via their whipping-boy, the grandson of the man who bankrolled the Nazis to the extent that Roosevelt wanted to try him for treason.

This is plain historical fact. You just like to believe the propaganda that's brainwashed you since you were a child, which binds your country in a collective delusion. You sock-puppet ;)

*The reason "human rights" is even a concern nowadays, is because it was brought in to the lexicon by the US as its justification for so much support of repression. Ironically the people who hate it most are those who support US neo-imperialism.

Quote:

What we have done (and this admission is to justify it) is openly use extremely mild forms of torture on three men

Oh please, it's an awful lot more than 3, and there's no such thing as "mild torture". And your "admission" justifies nothing: Bush broke the law plain and simple. Torture is something "civilised" nations put behind them centuries ago for damn good reasons: it is inhumane, first and foremost, damaging people for life; it brutalises the nation that carries it out, making them worse than anyone else; and it doesn't even work, since people will tell you whatever you want to hear, so you think you have to torture more and more, to try and cross-reference and get more than one source, which is just a spiral into hell.

Quote:

having information that could save the lives of thousands of innocent people (information which, for example, led to the death of Osama bin Laden and the infiltration of al Qaeda in Yemen),

Wait, so you're saying the previous decade of torture under Bush didn't happen, it was just 3 people recently which got you Bin Laden? Bullshit.

As for the lives of innocent people ("think of the children!"), how many were killed, and continue to die, in Iraq (a war premised on a lie) and how many have been killed, and continue to be murdered, as "collateral damage" in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Now add in the people killed all across the world for the last 60 years or so, the time of US hegemony, in places such as Latin America (where the governments were propped up by the US), Iran (the Shah, supported by Britain and the US), Iraq (Saddam Hussein, funded and trained by the CIA and then kept in place as "our bastard").. the list goes on, but would be incomplete without the people Israel has killed, locked-up, and driven out of their own homes, imprisoning 1.2 million people in about 60 square miles while annexing their water and nation, supported by the US in direct breaches of international law and the Geneva Conventions.

I guess they don't matter, since they're not USian. But then US citizens don't matter either, at home, if they don't have money. (That must be their fault, after all that's what the media tells us in so many different ways.)

Oh and don't forget that Bin Laden was originally trained and funded by the CIA, in order to get tribal Afghans to fight the Russians. "Al-quaeda" meaning "the foundation" was the name of the computer database of handy guerrilla techniques he carried about on a laptop, and guess where that info came from? That's right, your government. The US invented and setup Al-Quaeda, you fuckwit, and Bin Laden took the mujahideen concept in order to support his radical Wahabbi fundamentalism, which is what Saudi-Arabia sponsors all across the globe, but we don't say anything about that, do we? The US is the reason the Taliban even got established. Again, what should ordinary Afghans think about your country?

And you want to claim superiority of your nation over everyone else's for cleaning up a bit of its own mess in the most roundabout and dumbass way possible: first letting Bin Laden escape (Bush delayed about 12 hours before launching an attack on a very likely location, by which time he'd moved), then going off and starting a war in a different country whose government Al-Quaeda hated, and where they had zero presence, completely destroying that country, murdering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, and spending trillions of dollars to do it, and leaving behind a country where Al-Quaeda now have a very strong presence, meanwhile letting them setup subsidiaries all over the globe.

Quote:

while other hypocritical governments looked on, concealing their own similar and worse activity, allowing their mindless, babbling idiotic citizenry to be used as political puppets

And what exactly are you doing in this hysterical, passionate, fact-free rant?

I've no problem with stating quite clearly that every nation (apart from the Nation which your beloved country perpetrated genocide upon to steal their land) has a history of barbarity and support of brutality in order to acquire resources abroad, and in some cases genocide and slavery, most especially the Europeans. The euphemism is 'realpolitik' like that somehow makes it ok.

You seem to be asserting however that the 400 years of slavery that your country was built upon, or indeed the chain-gangs and enslaved Chinese labour, was perpetrated and organised by Europeans all on their own, which seems like quite remarkable head-twisting.

Nor does any of what the Europeans did in any sense make it acceptable for the US to do the same. Is that your view of "morality"? Because it sounds awfully fucked-up to me.

Quote:

in protests of the U.S. activity, only to immediately drop the subject when the U.S. government changed hands, despite the fact that the activity continued in secret and was escalated into a rampaging campaign of assassination, because such protests were no longer useful in protecting and advancing their own socio-economic agenda.

You moron: many people have protested the same activity under Obama, even more vociferously since he stated he would end that approach. It just doesn't get reported in your country.

Quote:

You're a propaganda victim -- a hand-puppet -- and you don't even know it. :?

See below (and above.)

Quote:

Also, your bigotry is showing: you talk about someone "braying about how great" the U.S. is, but no one has done so. No one has uttered anything that could even remotely be construed as such. I suppose that must just be happening in your head then, right? So ask yourself why that is, and how such irrelevant thoughts manage to wiggle, unbidden, out of there into the forefront of your thinking and into this conversation.

Puhleez, I've read the same in much of this forum, and you've just shown it, you ignoramus, in your rant about how "justified" the US has been, while everyone else is "hypocritical" and their citizens are "mindless, babbling idiots."

The U.S. is not, and has never been (not even in its darkest days during the height of the Cold War), the "largest exporter of terrorism on the planet". Nor has the U.S. provided undemocratic regimes with instruments of torture. Nor do we make people "disappear", like authoritarian left-wing states do.

You have no fscking clue what you are on about: like most Americans you live in a state of ignorance about the history of what your nation has done, and continues to do in your name. For example, Eisenhower testified before Congress in the 1950s about US involvement in Latin America, which had always been purported to be in the interest of "human rights"*. He stated quite clearly that the overriding mission objective he was given was to ensure a favourable economic investment climate for US corporations. energyman listed just a few of the regimes propped up by US military support,

I'd bet a month's income that I know a lot more about history, to include U.S. history (and even quite possibly, your island as well) than you. What's more important though, is that you are apparently unable to think logically: nothing you just said refutes what I said earlier or supports your earlier claims. Demonstrate with credible, factual evidence that the U.S. "is the largest exporter of terrorism on the planet and ships instruments of torture to other countries and trains them in their use". Irrelevant blather is irrelevant.

steveL wrote:

... and to whom instruments of torture were shipped out as "humanitarian aid."

Provide a link to a credible source that substantiates this claim.

steveL wrote:

*The reason "human rights" is even a concern nowadays, is because it was brought in to the lexicon by the US as its justification for so much support of repression. Ironically the people who hate it most are those who support US neo-imperialism.

U.S. foreign policy is hegemonistic, although not imperialistic. The U.S., perhaps stupidly, gives back everything it conquers. Imperialism is what Europe has engaged in for two thousand years, beginning with Athens and Rome, the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, all the Colonial powers (which is just about everybody), the Napoleonic Empire, the British Empire, The Third Reich, etc., etc. That's Imperialsm.

The Soviet Union was engaged in Imperialism, literally occupying and subjugating vast swathes of the world. While the U.S.-led NATO states played dirty along with them to resist their expansionism, this is what was necessary to avoiding being subjugated and absorbed into Communism. While some people's rights were unfortunately violated in the process, things are relative in the real word, and far, far more people's rights and lives were preserved. These events were but a tear-drop compared to sea of human rights atrocities that were committed by the Communist imperialism against which that tear was shed in resistance, including those in the Soviet Union, Red China, Cambodia, North Vietnam, Cuba, etc. Over a billion innocent people were massacred in just a few decades by these states in the name of the common good. Conflict hurts people and wars kill, but they sometimes have a valid purpose. What would the global human condition be today if Stalinist, Maoist communism had been allowed to prevail?

Similarly, while you may not be aware of much beyond your short, apparently uneducated life and the propaganda you have swallowed, events do not occur in a vacuum. Europe is this planets biggest oppressor and has been almost since the dawn of recorded history. A couple decades of weakness does not change that fact, because the World is still reeling from the effects of its repeated ass-raping at European hands. All the Middle Eastern territorial conflicts, the Islamic Jihadism, the genocidal African tribal wars, even China's distrust and enmity toward the West -- they are ALL the result of recently ended European colonial imperialism. Even Islamic terrorism, which was born in French-occupied Algeria and spread from there, encouraged by European powers during the World Wars who tried to use Arabs as partisans, and was then adopted by others throughout British- and French-occupied and exploited Middle Eastern territories, is a result of European Imperialism. That shit has been going on for about 2,500 years, pretty much non-stop. It started with Greek campaigns around Ionia (with the Trojan War in there somewhere), and it hasn't stopped since. And that's just the part we know about!

The U.S. is a late entrant into this scenario, only coming onto the scene after Europeans had beaten each other into poverty and weakness, and with the advent of the Cold War and the need to keep Western Civilization from beneath the boot of Communism. It's covert operations during the Cold War and now during the "Clash of Civilizations" or whatever you want to call it pale in comparison to the routine activities of any European state throughout that entire 2,500 year time span (or any other state, for that matter, if you want to throw the racist Chinese, Mayans, and Aztecs into the mix). The people of India are about the only people who can claim superiority in that regard.

The U.S. overthrowing the totalitarian regime of Saddam Hussein and then giving the country back to its people does not constitute imperialism. While the U.S. has supported terrorists on occasion during the Cold War and perhaps even now in Eastern Iran, the U.S. has done less of this than many other countries, most notably, Europeans, who are the ones, for example, who turned the Arabs into what they are like today by employing them as raiders and saboteurs against the Turks, who turned tribe against tribe throughout Africa (where they are still chopping each other's arms off in imitation of their former Belgian masters) and throughout North America (where those who survived being decimated by European disease were taught to take scalps and genitalia in exchange for money). Even today, the U.S. is far from being the biggest "exporter" of terrorism: Iran, Pakistan, Syria, and Sudan are.

By the way, Terrorism is the intentional harming of random innocent civilians for the purposes of instilling fear in a populace and thereby influencing public policy. Supporting a dictator, while it may be immoral, is not "exporting terrorism" (unless that dictator is indeed engaging in terrorism, like Saddam Hussein was when he had entire neighborhoods executed or dropped blister agent on tribesmen).

steveL wrote:

Quote:

What we have done (and this admission is to justify it) is openly use extremely mild forms of torture on three men

Oh please, it's an awful lot more than 3, and there's no such thing as "mild torture". And your "admission" justifies nothing: Bush broke the law plain and simple. Torture is something "civilised" nations put behind them centuries ago for damn good reasons: it is inhumane, first and foremost, damaging people for life; it brutalises the nation that carries it out, making them worse than anyone else; and it doesn't even work, since people will tell you whatever you want to hear, so you think you have to torture more and more, to try and cross-reference and get more than one source, which is just a spiral into hell.

This is a strawman and another knee-jerk reaction. I never tried to justify the use of torture. I simply acknowledged what actually happened, as opposed to your hyperbole. If you don't think there's a difference between mild and severe torture, I invite you try it. The world is not black-and-white; there are degrees of wrong, and I never said it wasn't wrong. So try and keep your bigotry, prejudices, and pre-conceived notions in check and address what is actually being said.

Secondly, "civilized" nations have not put torture behind them. They still engage in it. They just don't admit it like the Bush administration inexplicably did. Even when caught red-handed, they deny it. Don't be so naive. Also, they don't restrict themselves to pre-approved methods like water-boarding and stress positions.

I am still waiting for you to produce evidence that the U.S. has exported torture devices to other countries and trained them in their use. Also, if you think more than three people were water-boarded, show me a credible source that supports that claim -- I am open-minded and want to know the truth.

steveL wrote:

Quote:

having information that could save the lives of thousands of innocent people (information which, for example, led to the death of Osama bin Laden and the infiltration of al Qaeda in Yemen),

Wait, so you're saying the previous decade of torture under Bush didn't happen, it was just 3 people recently which got you Bin Laden? Bullshit.

That's a strawman. If you want to argue about what I said, then argue about what I actually said, not something you made up.

There was no "decade of torture under Bush". Bush approved, for about a two-year period, the use of specific "enhanced interrogation techniques", which were authorized for use on known terrorists believed to have highly valuable intelligence which could serve to save lives. "Water boarding", the most well-known example, was used on about three people at the Guantanamo detention facility. That's it. Stress was used more widely, in Iraq and Afghanistan. That included putting people in stress positions, depriving them of a certain amount of sleep, subjecting them to uncertainty and strange stimulus. When it was found that this was being abused in Iraq, this was halted. I'm not trying to minimize what happened. It's torture, and no matter how mild, it should not be authorized. As we discovered, it's a very slippery slope. What I'm saying is that you're grandly exaggerating it. More to the point, the U.S. having openly engaged in some limited use of torture (and then stopping it -- all of which occurred under Bush the Evil Fucking Satan From Hell) does NOT constitute the U.S. being the "biggest exporter of terrorism on the planet" or having "shipped torture devices to other countries and showed them how to use them", a claim for which you have yet to provide credible substantiation.

steveL wrote:

[As for the lives of innocent people ("think of the children!"), how many were killed, and continue to die ... blah blah blah....

That has nothing to do with your claim that the U.S. is the biggest exporter of terrorism in the world and propagates the use of torture. It's a red herring and a change of subject. We can separately debate just war doctrine and the morality of violent conflict.

steveL wrote:

I've no problem with stating quite clearly that every nation (apart from the Nation which your beloved country perpetrated genocide upon to steal their land) has a history of barbarity and support of brutality in order to acquire resources abroad, and in some cases genocide and slavery, most especially the Europeans. The euphemism is 'realpolitik' like that somehow makes it ok.

Actually, it is now understood that the Spanish killed about 85% of the native North American population, with disease, before other Europeans even began to colonize North America. It's true that, after almost 300 years of European colonial occupation of North America, the "Westward Expansion" of the U.S. was effectively genocidal in nature, because forced relocation into poverty killed many natives, and others were killed when they fought against it. But I believe it is important to understand that the North and South American native population was largely wiped out by Europeans (greedy or fanatical colonizing or converting, torturing, raping, thieving, and European-war-spreading Europeans).

steveL wrote:

You seem to be asserting however that the 400 years of slavery that your country was built upon, or indeed the chain-gangs and enslaved Chinese labour, was perpetrated and organised by Europeans all on their own, which seems like quite remarkable head-twisting.

This is another strawman. I never said any such thing. If you think I did, then please show me where.

The European colonists who settled in America widely engaged in slavery, and while most of the founders of the U.S. were against the practice and wanted to abolish it when the country became independent, enough objected to abolition that it continued for 80 to 90 years (of the 400 you speak of) in the actual U.S., before it was crushed by a bloodly civil war, at great cost of life. No other nation has given so much to free slaves. Europe continued to engage in the practice, if not domestically then in Africa, for many years, and your country was one of the worst offenders, exploiting and effectively enslaving hundreds of millions on four continents. In my opinion, other than the Chinese and Japanese, Europeans are the most racist and violent people on the face of the Earth.

steveL wrote:

Nor does any of what the Europeans did in any sense make it acceptable for the US to do the same. Is that your view of "morality"? Because it sounds awfully fucked-up to me.

This is not a tu quoque argument. You specifically stated that the U.S. is "rant spittle sputter rant! the most imperialistic, terror exporting, torturing country on the planet", or words to that effect. I am effectively saying, "No, it's not. Europe is." And unless you want to artificially narrow your window of consideration to the period in which Europe has been too weak and guilt-ridden to do much harm to anybody, I don't see how you can disagree. Furthermore, if it weren't Europe, it would be China, or Russia, or Turkey, or Iran.

While the U.S. has done some things many people would object to, the reason people's heads are filled with this today in complete ignorance of global and historical perspective, is because (a) they are uneducated; (b) it's being pumped at them as propaganda in support of a socio-economic agenda; and (c) it's a convenient red herring to distract from trouble at home.

steveL wrote:

Quote:

in protests of the U.S. activity, only to immediately drop the subject when the U.S. government changed hands, despite the fact that the activity continued in secret and was escalated into a rampaging campaign of assassination, because such protests were no longer useful in protecting and advancing their own socio-economic agenda.

You moron: many people have protested the same activity under Obama, even more vociferously since he stated he would end that approach. It just doesn't get reported in your country.

I know you're new here, but directly calling a participant in the discussion a moron is going too far. People get banned for that, so be careful.

I am well aware that some people are much more quietly continuing to protest against U.S. military and covert operations. However, the amount and volume of such protestation has become almost negligible. We don't see large-scale protests in the streets about it on a regular basis. Also, the pathetic sycophants to your North, whom some of you call ancestor, gave him a Nobel Peace Prize. How do you rationalize that?

steveL wrote:

Quote:

Also, your bigotry is showing: you talk about someone "braying about how great" the U.S. is, but no one has done so. No one has uttered anything that could even remotely be construed as such. I suppose that must just be happening in your head then, right? So ask yourself why that is, and how such irrelevant thoughts manage to wiggle, unbidden, out of there into the forefront of your thinking and into this conversation.

Puhleez, I've read the same in much of this forum, and you've just shown it, you ignoramus, in your rant about how "justified" the US has been, while everyone else is "hypocritical" and their citizens are "mindless, babbling idiots."

Another personal attack? And a double strawman to boot: show me where I said "the U.S. is justified". You are implying that I say everything the U.S. has done is justified, and I said no such thing. You are equivocating a statement that thing A was justified with a statement that thing B was justified, so that you can, by comparison, attack it. In fact, I've said that certain things the U.S. has done have been immoral. And, I also did not say "everyone else" is hypocritical, or that all the citizens of all the other countries are mindless idiots. I was specific about whom that referred to.

Such twisting of words is the sign of a weak position. You came in here and said the U.S. is the biggest exporter of terrorism in the world, and that it ships devices of torture to other countries and trains them in how to use them.

I challenged these statements and asked you back them up.

So far, you have spewed a lot of unrelated information, attempted to twist my words several times, and even blatantly and directly insulted me, which is a violation of the forum guidelines -- but despite all that sputtering and arm-flailing, you have failed to substantiate your claims._________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

I have come to view geopolitics as less an issue of ideology/morality, and more as discovery channel footage of one chimp tribe going to war with another, magnified into human form.

Every tribe/nation/empire tried at some point or another to subjugate "others", either directly via power display (usually warfare/economy) or subversively and ideologically. Greek city states waged war, persians did it, macedonians, romans, mongolians, chinese dynasties, japanese, europeans, mayans, etc etc.

There seems to be no moral high stance except the right to life, and the basic concept of inalienable human rights, in a sense that it is right for those opressed to rise against the opressor. Whatever the funky idea the opressor had in first place. But the moment the uprising becomes too successful, and the former opressed become the opressors themselves, the moral pendulum swings in another direction, and the attempt to escape moral responsibility usually ends up with "you started first", which is a sad state of political rhethoric if it cannot progress further than what my sister and I used to harass our parents with when we were kids.

I have come to view geopolitics as less an issue of ideology/morality, and more as discovery channel footage of one chimp tribe going to war with another, magnified into human form.

Every tribe/nation/empire tried at some point or another to subjugate "others", either directly via power display (usually warfare/economy) or subversively and ideologically. Greek city states waged war, persians did it, macedonians, romans, mongolians, chinese dynasties, japanese, europeans, mayans, etc etc.

There seems to be no moral high stance except the right to life, and the basic concept of inalienable human rights, in a sense that it is right for those opressed to rise against the opressor. Whatever the funky idea the opressor had in first place. But the moment the uprising becomes too successful, and the former opressed become the opressors themselves, the moral pendulum swings in another direction, and the attempt to escape moral responsibility usually ends up with "you started first", which is a sad state of political rhethoric if it cannot progress further than what my sister and I used to harass our parents with when we were kids.

I agree. The "you started it" syndrome is very apparent, particularly among those unaware of history. I have said before the the East-West clash of civilizations probably started when some Phrygian farmer's escaped goat fell in with some Galatian shepherd's flock, and has been building up on a "They started it!" basis ever since._________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

In the UK a faggot is a name for a type of meatball, so the term "Spamming faggot" takes on a surreal twist....is it a homosexual that mass emails or is it a meatball on holiday in Hawaii.

I thought it was a cigarette (or, more archaically, a bundle of twigs)._________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

I thought it was a cigarette (or, more archaically, a bundle of twigs).

Cigarette is fag, and yes it's also a bundle of twigs. From the font of all knowledge.

Quote:

Faggots were used as the subject of an infamous 2004 radio advert by the UK supermarket chain Somerfield.[7] The commercial featured husband Tom Woollacott challenging his wife's repetitive routine of a set meal for each day of the week. While he wanted lasagne, he was told that, as it was Friday, he was to have faggots. He responded: "I've nothing against faggots, I just don't fancy them."

To "fag" is also to tire out, as in, "the Italian football side looks fagged", or "the Spaniards are beginning to fag".

So, in addition to a "spamming faggot", there could be a "fagging spammer"._________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

To "fag" is also to tire out, as in, "the Spanish football team looks fagged".

So, in addition to a "spamming faggot", there could be a "fagging spammer".

A fag is also a freshman in a English private school that is subservient to a older pupil...and with all the sniggering about buggery in English "Public" Schools this probably is where the perjoritive use of the word fag came from.

That reminds me... I recently met the son of my high school algebra and geometry teacher, who is himself now a high school teacher and soccer coach.

I'll have to tell him about the time his father, red-eyed and apparently stoned, informed the geometry class that an octogon had eight sides, just like an octopus had eight pussies, and then started giggling uncontrollably._________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

Last edited by Bones McCracker on Mon Nov 12, 2012 6:08 am; edited 1 time in total

That reminds me... I recently met the son of my high school algebra and geometry teacher. I'll have to tell him about the time his father, apparently stoned, informed the geometry class that an octogon had eight sides, just like an octopus had eight pussies, and then started giggling uncontrollably.

By the way, I'd like to point out to the O.P. the grammatical error in the thread title. The proper word is "whom", not "who". Ideally, it should be "With whom did you really side?"

If you goes through life saying things like, "Who did you really side with" outside of casual oral conversation, there are many people who will assume you are unintelligent or at least uneducated. You may or may not care about that, but at least now you have the option._________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. ~James Michener

I thought the quote I was familiar with used "editor" and wasn't by Michener, but I may be mistaken. In any case, I wouldn't hold "adhoc" writing against anyone. Authors who make a lot of money have some very, very rough drafts before they are rewritten and edited._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

If one goes through life saying things like, "It's 'whom', not 'who'" in the context of casual communication, there are many people who will assume one to be a prick or at least obsessive-compulsive. One may or may not care about that, but I certainly don't. _________________History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. -- Abba Eban